Anna Carey

What sort of funny songs?""My balls are swearing my balls are swearing I can't keep my balls from sweating ohhh no.""How is that funny?" I asked. "As in the balls of your feet?""No, it's like this thing..... Never mind," he said.

I learned the strange art of loneliness, the weathered yearning that swells and passes, and swells and passes, when you walk a trail alone.

What are you doing with all these books?" I asked, stepping towards a tall stack on the floor. I ran my fingers down the spines, recognizing a few familiar titles from School: Heart of Darkness, The Great Gatsby, and To the Lighthouse.Caleb came beside me, his warm shoulder brushing against mine. "I do this funny thing sometimes," she said, shooting me a mischievous grin. "I open a book, and I look at each page. It's called reading

What If I still want to go?" "Then you'll go," he said. "But I wanted you to know the danger." "There's always danger." His green eyes met mine. I was starting to see It, how It could happen-Caleb and me.

I__ stare up at the sky, reminding myself that Caleb and I were both underneath it. That wherever he was, whatever he was doing, we would always share something.

Leif gripped Benny's shoulders to hold him back, but he broke free and chased the truck, pumping his tiny arms and legs with great furry."I love you!" he called out, when he was just ten feet away. I gripped the metal bars, my throat choked with emotion."I love you!" Silas cried, as he followed.They both kept after us, sprinting wildly behind the cage. I watched their mouths moving, saying those words over and again, as the truck bounded through the woods and their small bodies disappeared, unreachable, behind the trees.

I wished to no longer hear the grayed bones crunching underneath the brush or feel the now inexorable fear that seemed to work its way inside my rib cage, rocking me at my core.

I loved my mother too,' I said. 'I still do. That's the thing - it never goes away, even if the person does.

I've fallen in love with you," he whispered to kiss the top of my hand.

Happiness is the anticipation of future happines.

We stood side by side, and for that minute, in the stillness of that room, he was not the King. I was not not the Princess, taken against her will to the City. We were two people trying to forget.